„The president of the Valencian PP was forced to switch to Spanish in front of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.“ read the headline on elnacional.cat yesterday, 17 December, and elperiodico.com softened: „The PP leader in Valencia was criticised for speaking in Valenciano at a rally.“

What happend?

Feijóo is the president of the Spanish autonomous region of Galicia and the presidential candidate for entire Spain of the conservative PP , Spain's Partido Popular. Feijóo is also responsible for imposing the language imposition of the regional Galician in Galicia, similarly extreme to the language imposition of Catalan in Catalonia.

The president of the Valencian PP is Vicent Mompó and his mother tongue is Valenciano.

At a PP meeting on 16 December, Mompó began his speech in Valenciano. Listeners immediately asked him to speak Spanish. Commenting on this, elnacional.cat said: „Language discrimination at a PP rally.“ and continued: „One of the militants in the audience interrupted him to ask him to express himself 'in Spanish, please' instead of Catalan.“

Leaving aside „subtleties“ like the fact that Mompó's mother tongue is Valenciano and not Catalan, or that listeners who demand Spanish that can be understood by all present are called militants. What is so difficult about speaking Castilian/Spanish to each other, as provided for in the Spanish constitution. Article 3 there states:
„1. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it.
2. The other Spanish languages shall also be official in the respective Autonomous Communities according to their statutes.“

India, Nigeria and many other former colonial peoples with dozens of indigenous languages use English, the language of their former colonial masters, as their official language; in former French states, French is treated similarly. The autonomous territories of Spain have never experienced any murderous policies of Madrid like colonial peoples of Asia and Africa suffered.

But that is not the point. These reports indicate that the PP, like the PSOE, is a party that uses the language dispute as a means of distraction from the real problems. For example, the situation in the health sector, where the Valencian Minister of Health, Miguel Mínguez, has now admitted that Valenciano cannot be imposed on doctors because there are not enough doctors.

If, for example, inflation or the situation in the health system, which is no longer ridiculous at all (see Valenciano and 4 days in hospital emergency room), was discussed at the PP meeting, I could not find in any of the above reports.